If you are unwilling to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary. – Jim Rohn

Ordinary. Normal. Everybody else is doing it.

We have all wished for or strived for these things at one point or another. Whether it be to fit in or to feel loved or to relieve some of our own insecurities and anxieties; we purposefully looked for and strived for normal and ordinary.

One of the great tragedies of life is coming to the end of it having not lived all of it. Having not been the most truest version of you possible.

The scary part is that the awesomest version of you is NOT normal. Not even close.

In fact, I would venture to say that the potential of our inherent abilities is so overwhelmingly different that we get a little scared. A little scared to live out the life uniquely set before us.

We must be willing to risk unusual or settle for ordinary.

We choose. Life doesn’t choose for us.

What’s your choice?

Make it a great and unusual day.

Jake ​

What do I have?

What am I going to do with it?

I was listening to a podcast the other day and the speaker asked some versions of these two questions.

What a powerful and positive way to look at your life.

We all have some resources available to us.

We all have talents, relationships, and knowledge we can use in our pursuit of happiness.

We just need to leverage them. To use them as a tool to do more than we could otherwise do.

I encourage you today to think through these two questions. Maybe even write them out.

And then take action. Take a positive step forward today.

Make it a great day.

Jake ​

In "The Best Question Ever" Andy Stanley addresses time and how we spend it as he helps the readers work through asking the best question ever.

He summarizes time and how we spend it in 4 points:

1. There is a cumulative value to investing small amounts of time in certain activities over a long period.
2. There are rarely any immediate consequences for neglecting single installments of time in any arena of life.
3. Neglect has a cumulative effect.
4. There is no cumulative value to the urgent things that we allow to interfere with the important things.

Are you struggling with time?

Too busy to get to the important stuff in your life?

Too busy to get to the important people in your life?

Andy’s best question ever might just help. Andy contends that the best question ever is: "What is the wise thing to do?"

The way to apply this to your time is simply to ask "What is the wise way to spend my time?"

Another way to look at it would be to analyze your current use of time. "Am I spending my time wisely?" or "If a wise person were to see how I spend my time, would they suggest any changes?"

Make it a great day.

Jake

PS – A little trick when it comes to time. Track your time for a week. Write down everything and how long you spend doing it. At the end of the week review the results. I am guessing you will see at least one possibility for a positive change to make. ​

http://youtu.be/_WamkRSDeD8

Maybe its just that we have a little boy at home, but this song gets me every time it pops up on my Pandora station.

It reminds me of one of my all time favorite movie scenes:

http://youtu.be/MPnudujlBZI

The best part of this scene: he is talking to his own son.

And a great message for all of us.

If you want something, go get it.

Make it a great Friday.

Jake ​

Every day is a new life to a wise man.

Another email in the "seize the day" category.

Each day we have the opportunity to begin anew.

To begin anew while leveraging the lessons of the past.

To begin anew while seeing a clearer picture of our future.

Treat today as a new life. One full of opportunity, abundance and possibility.

And make it a great day.

Jake ​

Words do two major things: They provide food for the mind and create light for understanding and awareness. – Jim Rohn

Yesterday was the first of two training sessions here at Mavidea.

The core concept: the words we choose matter.

Replacing negative words with positive words will change the outcome of the conversations we are having.

It was easy to see how this can help us and our customers here at Mavidea.

And I hope that everyone also picked up on something else: it can drastically

improve the rest of your life as well.

In one of his seminars Jim Rohn talks about how sometimes a person’s positive vocabulary is so small that they end up in prison cell to match it.

That’s how small their view on the world is and how much of a difference words can make.

Let’s use this reminder to work on vocabulary and the words we choose. Let’s feed our minds more positive words and create a more positive light for us and others to see.

Make it a great day.

Jake

Our business in life is not to get ahead of others, but to get ahead of ourselves – to break our own records, to outstrip our yesterday by our today. – Stewart Johnson

I thought this quote was a great follow up to yesterday’s email about making the most of your todays

When we look at our todays and how they are spent, comparing to others is not the benchmark.

Our benchmark should be the inherent possibilities and opportunities that lie within ourselves.

One of my favorite things about sports was the process of finding out that I was actually capable of more than I thought.

I could always run faster or play better than I thought I was capable of.

I’m sure there were points in time where I thought this was because I was so special and talented, but a little maturity and age has cured me of that.

We ALL are capable of so much more than we can imagine.

Make it a great day.

Jake

​

Salutation to the Dawn

Look to this day!

For it is life, the very life of life.

In its brief course

Lie all the verities and realities of your existence:

The bliss of growth;

The glory of action;

The splendor of achievement;

For yesterday is but a dream,

And tomorrow is only a vision;

But today, well lived, makes every yesterday

a dream of happiness,

And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Reading "How To Stop Worrying" by Dale Carnegie and the first section is about not letting the regrets of the past or the worries about tomorrow ruin your todays.

This short poem really summarized it all very well.

Today is the place where everything happens.

All of your opportunity lies in today.

String together a bunch of great todays and before you know you will have lived a great life.

Let’s get started.

Make it a great today.

Jake ​

http://youtu.be/YPIA7mpm1wU

Maggie randomly requested to watch and listen to this one last night.

I was thinking afterwards how amazing it is that a silly song could bring together a little 7 year old and an Olympic swim team that was in China.

And this reminded me of a conversation I had once where someone smarter than me was explaining to me the power of music as a "universal language".

How true. Somehow it (maybe this song doesn’t quite reach out to everyone) reaches out to that part of all of us that is uniquely human. Created in a special way, for a special purpose.

Make it a great day.

Jake ​